My eldest sister, Wilma went at the shop with her laptop which I had just fixed a week ago. May problema na naman. The laptop, Dell Inspiron 1501, with 512 Ram, ATIRadeon Xpress 1150, 256 Hypermemory (integrated), powered by AMD Turion 64x Dual-Core Mobile Technology TL-56 Processor was purchased by Alvin, her youngest kid in the US. It has Windows Vista Home Basic Edition installed. Nuong unang dinala niya sa akin iyon she was complaining that she can't access her Logitech Fusion Webcam which she bought here in the Philippines. Yahoo Messsenger also hungs up. The system also took too long to boot up and shut off. Nakapaghugas na nga daw siya ng pinggan bago mag-open at close yung windows) What first came out of my mind was that Vista might be causing the problems since I have read a lot of resentments and negative evaluations about this latest operating system from Microsoft. So just like a doctor, I did first aid steps with the laptop with the thought that it might cure ( somehow) all the perplexities. I searched from Logitech Home Page any Vista driver compatible for the said webcam and installed it. I also updated all the necessary drivers and patches from Dell support website. My sister went home after these emergency treatments on the computer.
Kinagabihan, Nanette , her eldest kid called me up and reported the same problem of the laptop. I told her to bring it back at the shop so I can trouble shoot it once again. The unit came after a week. I told my sister " Hindi titino itong computer mo unless na papalitan natin ng OS". To make it short, I reformatted it and installed Windows XP Professional Service Pack2 instead. After doing so, all seemed to run smooth and well.
What you should take from this article? It maybe true that Microsoft has been working for Vista for over 5 years now, but this doesn't mean that it is better in everyway. Marami sa atin just want the latest, they don't care if the older just work fine, though many out there are dying to install it on their system. If you are not going through trouble using XP it is not time yet to upgrade.
Windows Vista clearly is not a great new performer as of this time. There are a lot of programs that refused to work with it and showed deeply dissappointing performances. Besides, hindi lahat ng Vista drivers are ready for prime time and isn't fully supported yet by all the companies that do things for MS ( i.e. virus protection, DirectX compatibility, etc., etc.) you must make sure your machine can even run on it. They are asking for minimum specification to be 1G RAM, but you really should have at least 2G. 4G looking more and more like it should be the minimum. A graphic card equal to the latest VooDoo model and other expensive models.
My conclusion is, if you like the most, you need to buy it when you needed it most. I don't personally recommend Vista at this point of time simply because it is not needed. It is not time to upgrade or buy the software unless you need something not available in other operating systems. If you are more familiar with XP and does what Vista will do, do not waste your time. There is not much of a difference between XP and Vista overall!
